From left, Laura Lichter, Grayson Robinson and Alicia Caldwell on set of Colorado State of Mind.

I did a taping for Rocky Mountain PBS’s Colorado State of Mind[2] today for a show on immigration and I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised by the moderate and pragmatic positions of my fellow guests — immigration lawyer Laura Lichter and Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson.

I’m not sure whether this says more about me or about them.

I was unfamiliar with the finer points of their positions on immigration enforcement going into the show. And my experience has been that the public discourse about immigration so often gets heated, and the opinions from interests that Robinson and Lichter represent — law enforcement and immigrant rights respectively — are easily stereotyped. So often, the screamers drown out the moderate voices.

That wasn’t the case today. Not at all.

Lichter[3], a Denver lawyer who is president of American Immigration Lawyers Association, agrees with many of the aims of Secure Communities[4], the nation’s key immigration enforcement program though she did allow as how it’s not, in her mind, properly executed all the time. It is, however, improving. She also said she was optimistic about the immigration reform landscape.

After the show, we talked more about the Obama administration’s recent policy changes[5] regarding young illegal immigrants who were brought to this country as children. She sees it as a potential game-changer that could have positive reverberations in all sorts of areas, including the high school drop-out rate. I think she’s right.

As for the sheriff[6], he said he has no interest in being an arm of federal immigration enforcement and thought it would be contrary to law enforcement efforts to practice community policing. Local law enforcement shouldn’t be seen as the deportation cops.

So, you might wonder, why would he favor Secure Communities? Because the sheriff understands exactly how it works. There is no judgment call on the part of law enforcement when it comes to immigration status. It is a more egalitarian way of checking immigration status — everyone who is booked into a jail and fingerprinted is checked. That’s beyond his control, and he is fine with that.

The one quibble that Robinson has with the system as it is set up is that local law enforcement isn’t consulted by those deciding whether to deport an illegal immigrant who has had a run-in with the law. The locals, Robinson asserted, have a more sophisticated grasp of whether someone poses a potential threat to the community. I think he’s right on that, but I’m not sure whether local law enforcement really wants to have even an advisory role in deciding whether someone gets booted from the country. That could undercut the neutral role Robinson is promoting.

In any case, so often the images you see are the immigration lawyers who have nothing but venomous contempt for Secure Communities, and the law enforcement officers who want to take an aggressive role in identifying illegal immigrants for deportation.

Robinson and Lichter defied those stereotypes, and it was a pleasure to discuss immigration policy with them.